


animus vox

by 1001cranes



Series: Nemo - Phoenix Fields [3]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Evil, F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:21:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14413632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: everybody wants to rule the world





	animus vox

they have a base in one of the shifting planes. It is not a home - a home is where you belong, home is where the heart is, and there are at least two problems with that definition - but sometimes the base is a haven, when all three of them are there. 

julian calls it the castle - as luxurious as a palace but not a palace, because palaces don’t have defenses; not a fortress because sariel is nobility after all, so it must be a castle. 

“lets put in a moat,” nemo says, “fill it with chuul” and julian rolls his eyes but sariel finds a drow sorcerer who speaks to aberrations and does just that. 

“monsters for a monster boy,” she says and he loves her he loves her just for that he loves that she knows to love him with teeth.

| |

julian knows when nemo wants his attention because something of julian’s - something shiny expensive terrible dangerous wanted missed - disappears. 

“we call this the princess and the monster where i come from,” julian says, somewhere just to the back left of nemo as he slides a dagger - plain metal sharp and stinging and quite possibly piercing nemo’s kidney but not magic not poison - up and into his back.

(this is not a game that sariel plays with them. sariel likes games but does not like losing, sariel does not like games that end in slashed clothing, sariel could pull a star from the sky but can’t hide the light that surrounds her, and this is a game of shadows a game for julian&nemo alone cheating and tussling and backstabbing.)

nemo melds into the shadows the dark the fell the cold and then the next room, blood falling in between this world and the next. 

“am  _ I _ the princess?” he says, waiting for julian’s faint amused exhalation on the other side of the wall before spending a few misty steps to speed up the stairs and into the tower.

nemo loves when julian comes to find him loves that julian is one of the few people to remember he should be looking.

| |

“did you have fun today?” sariel asks them later, not quite a question, and nemo and julian make a chorus of little mhmms from the bloody sweat soaked sheets that are not quite answers in turn.

“nemo was being a shit,” julian continues bluntly. tattling. is it tattling if you want to be told on? 

the bed dips as sariel sits down beside them. “ _ was _ he.” 

much of what sariel says comes out with a purr with a sharp fuzzy crackle when It is close to the surface when It is angry or bored. and angry is fine angry is its own kind of power for a storm made flesh but boredom is perhaps the most dangerous of sariel’s emotions. boredom leads to battle, lead to blood, leads to stepping on the fragments of whatever plane they’ve just destroyed. nemo isn’t against it, precisely, but the bed is oh so soft and he’s just the right side of well-fucked and ready for sariel to settle herself upon him wherever she likes and take whatever she wants.

“i’m incredibly well mannered, don’t listen to him,” nemo says instead, and sariel’s fingers are warm and shocking and trace where the still healing knife wounds and the bite marks and the scars overlap until nemo couldn’t tell you has skin quite frankly he’s not sure he has a body at all.

| |

sariel is a conqueror, blistering and beautiful and capricious, the wrath of a thousand storms winnowed to a single crackling point. yet for all their rivers of blood and mountains of bones sariel is an ambassador’s daughter, with a silver tongue and golden words and quicksilver promises.

“a thing is always partially its name,” she tells him, “always partially its reputation, and to damage either is to damage the thing itself.”

there are men who say ‘goldenstar’ is if it were the name of a goddess and few who would dare to say ‘sariel’ above a whisper. 

“ _ lady _ goldenstar,” julian will say sometimes, sing-song, teasing, “queen of alanar, savior of kintoroth, lolth’s promise, mistress of the elements, tempest of the fields--” twisting here and there to avoid sariel’s laughing, lazy swats as nemo giggles. 

julian and nemo have few names between them; to nemo it has seemed only right to have scarcely one when sariel has so many. they are merely the sharpest points of her conquest - her vanguard, her right hand and her shadow. 

because julian julian silver julian the infernal is as close a man has ever been made into a weapon, so perfectly honed so finely tuned. though nemo is forgettable more things have died without seeing julian’s face than he could ever dream of. julian is a marvel, and sometimes nemo will do his best to wrap sariel in shadow so they can sit back and watch him work.

| |

sometimes when nemo thinks about before it hurts his head right behind his eyes hurts like pushing your tongue into the soft spot of a tooth like pressing a thumb into a nerve. he doesn’t know where the urge comes from or why he can’t stop. doesn’t know why each castle fortress house hidey-hole has a stack of books or even what he’s looking through when he pages through them.

he speaks common and elvish uses thieves tools and dice knows how to case a place look up a spell look over an object can find and stealth and steal and tell when someone is lying yet somehow has the kind of face anyone could forget. criminal thief warlock shade forgettable and forgotten. 

“i’m nobody,” he says when he has been forgotten once again, when all of julian and sariel and nemo’s tricks cannot bring a memory to light and they had left a man so broken with it julian had been moved to kill him out of pity. “i’m no one, and nothing,” a horror, a construct, a ghost of something that was once a man. 

“you’re  _ ours _ ,” sariel had hissed, or perhaps julian, or both, or perhaps It had, and they all reminded him words hands teeth fists bodies bruises blood because if nemo cannot leave his mark upon the world they will leave their mark upon him.

  
| |

there was no nemo before sariel and julian.

empirically there was, of course -- people don’t just spring into being, even people like nemo, even boys made of shadow and madness. people come from somewhere anywhere something someone made him, or at least made him like this. someone hollowed out the man and let the shadow in, someone cut off his ears and the lies stream out, someone decided that who he is worth the price of who he was.

“you could have been a prince,” julian says, laughing, and nemo snorts. “a king.”

“a criminal, more like,” because nemo’s skills at least have never been in doubt. “a princess and her paupers.”

“not a princess,” comes from the other side of the bed, sharp and amused. they share a bed with a queen if not an empress.

“nor paupers,” the gleam in julian’s eye sharper than the light of a distant star worth more than a handful of gold worth more than the entirety of the vault downstairs.

cogito ergo sum, nemo thinks, dubito ergo cogito ergo sum, and perhaps ego sum ego existo, none of which he believes in overmuch, none of which he cares to keep much separate in his head. perhaps this is why none of the pet philosophers he or sariel sometimes keep last for very long, or perhaps this is simply a very roundabout way of realizing that whatever happened before doesn’t matter overmuch. 

once upon a time sariel found fury found julian and they were like a star set against a night sky a bone amidst blood an iron hand in a velvet glove. who wouldn’t have fallen for them? nemo reassures himself - who wouldn’t have been drawn in like a moth to its doom? nemo has come to find he likes being owned - that the chains are as tight on either end, the links as binding. he could no more escape sariel and julian than they could leave him behind.  

there was nothing before sariel and julian because nothing before sariel and julian matters. that’s all. 


End file.
